In Memoriam

Eddie Man-Wai Leung, 1953-2016

Adapted from Leung family obituary

December 13, 2016 (PO48).  Engineering physicist Eddie Man-Wai Leung succumbed to cancer on August 1, surrounded by family and friends in San Diego.  He was 62 years old. Leung is remembered for an early enthusiasm for education. He majored in both Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Queen’s University in Canada, graduating in 1976 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics.

His first job was at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, where he built the world’s second largest superconducting split solenoid (electromagnet) for the Chicago Cyclotron Magnet Conversion Project and received the international Russell B. Scott Cryogenic Engineering Award for outstanding research in cryogenic temperature techniques. 

It was during this time that Eddie also received his Master of Engineering Management from the Midwest College of Engineering in Lombard, IL.

Over the next two decades, Leung put his technical and management skills in superconducting magnet applications, maglev, and sensors to use at various corporations in San Diego including General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics. In 2000, Leung founded Magtec Engineering, where he worked on the design and construction of large superconducting magnets for the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Laboratory, the TRUST program (a project on advanced anti-terrorist sensors for the US Department of Homeland Security), and other smaller maglev and consulting projects. Leung also served as a member of the US Senate National Maglev Advisory Committee and California State Assemblyman Tom Connolly’s Transportation Task Force.

Leung is survived by his wife, Irene, his daughter, Alicia, and his brother, Nelson. He is remembered as a devoted husband and father; a fun-loving and inquisitive man with many interests and passions, and as a knowledgeable and gently persuasive member of the cryogenics community.

Published with permission. The original is published in Cold Facts; October 2016, Volume 32, Number 5; 36. (www.cryogenicsociety.org).

Helen T. Edwards, 1936-2016

July 16, 2016 (PO47). Helen T. Edwards, a distinguished particle accelerator physicist, was born in Detroit, Michigan, USA, on May 27, 1936, and passed away on June 21, 2016, at the age of 80.

After attending the Madeira prep school in McLean, VA, USA, Helen studied physics at Cornell University, where she earned successively her bachelor’s, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. After graduating in 1966, she remained for four more years at Cornell, where she was a Research Associate at the 10 GeV Electron Synchrotron, initially working under Robert Wilson. In 1970 she joined him at the Fermi National Laboratory, where he was the first Director. She was immediately appointed Associate Head of the Booster Group and later Head of the Accelerator Division (1987-89).

Edwards was best known for leadership in the design, construction, commissioning, and operation of the Tevatron, which for 25 years was the most powerful particle collider in the world. The Tevatron turned on in 1983 when it began delivering particle beams for Fermilab’s fixed-target experiments. It recorded its first proton-antiproton collisions in 1985 and was used to find the top quark in 1995 and the tau neutrino in 2000, two of the three fundamental particles discovered at Fermilab. Today, Edwards is seen as one of the most vital contributors to the success of Fermilab over its five-decade history. She was also deeply involved in the eventually abandoned project of the Superconducting Super Collider in Dallas, Texas (1989-92). Although retired in 1992, she remained Guest Scientist at Fermilab until 2010. In these years she made significant contributions to the development of high-gradient, superconducting linear accelerators as well as bright and intense electron sources.

The work on the Tevatron earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the Genius Grant, in 1988, and the National Medal of Technology in 1989. She also received the Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Award and the Robert R. Wilson Prize of the American Physical Society. She was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and the National Academy of Engineering. She was also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

To all who knew her, Edwards was a force of nature. Her colleagues note her forward-thinking vision, her unrelenting determination to get things done and her penchant for coloring outside the lines when it came to solving problems. She was also known for her astonishing intellect, working out complex scientific problems by relying almost entirely on her own knowledge, without having to resort to outside references. The deep understanding of physics and her keen intuition was evident to everyone who knew her.

Edwards had a keen understanding of people and their strengths, with a knack for positioning them in roles where they would excel. She knew how to bring the right people together to carry out a project and how to encourage them to success. In private life, she was a nature lover and is remembered as a very gentle and caring person. Her kind nature extended to her friends and colleagues; she sincerely cared about people.

Compiled by SNF mostly from Fermilab News of June 27, 2016. For the full text of that online publication, see https://news.fnal.gov/2016/06/helen-edwards-visionary-behind-fermilabs-tevatron-dies/

Konrad H. Fischer Remembered

June 1, 2016 (PO46). Konrad H. Fischer, a theoretical physicist in areas of magnetism and superconductivity, passed away on May 3, 2016, in Jülich, Germany, after a long struggle with the Parkinson disease. Konrad was born on October 11th, 1929 in Premnitz, Brandenburg, Germany, and his career was somewhat unusual: he first became a qualified electrician (1950), and then earned a diploma in telecommunications at the Technical University Stuttgart (1955). Eventually, after two years of additional physics studies at Göttingen University, he became a doctoral student at the Technical University (RWTH) Aachen and KFA (now Research Center, FZJ) Jülich.

In only two years he graduated in theoretical physics with an engineering doctorate. The years 1965 to 1967 he was as an Assistant Prof. at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA, working on superconductivity problems with John Bardeen. The rest of his career, until retiring in 1994, he spent at KFA/FZJ and RWTH, where he earned his venia legendi (habilitation) in 1970 and became APL Professor in 1976. Some of his Ph.D. students became renowned physicists.

While Konrad’s early and late interest included superconductivity, he has been best known for his work on Kondo effect and spin glasses; on the latter, he co-authored a book [1]. His late interest became vortices in high-T_c superconductors [2]. After retiring, he served the superconductivity community for another 15 years as a reviewer of vortex matter papers for Physical Review and Phys. Rev. Letters.

Along with physics of solid state, classical music was Konrad’s life interest and passion, shared with his wife and transmitted to their five children. Both parents and children have been accomplished musicians, on some occasions even performing in public. By those who knew him well, Konrad will be fondly remembered as an extremely kind and helpful colleague, teacher, and advisor.

Alex Braginski for FZJ-PGI colleagues: I thank Mrs. Gertie Fischer, the wife of the deceased, for providing biographic details and reference samples.

[1] K. H. Fischer and J. A. Hertz, Spin Glasses, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991.
[2] K. H. Fischer, “Vortices in high-T_c superconductors”, Superconductivity Review 1, 153-206 (1995); K.H. Fischer and T. Nattermann, “Collective flux creep in high-T_c superconductors“, Phys. Rev. B 43, 12032 (1991).

Karl Gschneidner of Ames Laboratory Passed Away

May 23, 2016 (PO45).  Karl A. Gschneidner Jr., known internationally as Mr. Rare Earth, passed away on April 27, 2016, at the age of 85.  Gschneidner began work on his Ph.D. at Iowa State University (Ames, Iowa, USA) in 1955 while working as Ames Laboratory graduate researcher in metallurgy. After receiving his doctorate from Iowa State in 1957, he took a job in the Chemistry and Metallurgy Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, but returned to Ames in 1963. He formally retired from the Laboratory in January 2016, after a distinguished 60-year career that was dedicated to the study of rare-earth metals.

Among Gschneidner’s important contributions is one of major importance for magnetic refrigeration and cryogenics: the discovery in 1997 of the giant magnetocaloric effect in Gd₅(Si₂Ge₂) [1], which then lead to analogous discoveries in other rare earth compounds and alloys.  While dilution refrigerators largely supplanted adiabatic demagnetization at very low temperatures, the method remains of importance, e.g., in space applications.

Gschneidner was a Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa State University, a Senior Metallurgist at the Ames Laboratory, and the Chief Scientist of the Critical Materials Institute.  He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and earned a lengthy list of awards for his research.

A prolific writer, he published more than 544 articles in scientific journals and more than 170 chapters in books and conference proceedings.  As a testament to the quality of his research, his published works have been cited an astonishing 19,013 times – an average of 328 citations per year over his career.  It was his renown as “Mr. Rare Earth” that led to the establishment of the Critical Materials Institute, a U.S. Department of Energy Innovation Hub located at the Ames Laboratory.  Gschneidner testified before a Congressional committee about the need for such a research center and later served as the first chief scientist for CMI.

[1] Pecharsky, V. K.; Gschneidner, Jr., K. A.  "Giant Magnetocaloric Effect in Gd₅(Si₂Ge₂)".  
      Phys. Rev. Lett. 78 (23) 4494. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.78.4494

This abbreviated text is largely based on the obituary published by the online Ames Laboratory News Center, April 29, 2016.

April 21, 2016 (PO44). Colmar Hinnrichs unexpectedly passed away on February 27, 2016, after a brief illness, the day after his 50th birthday.

He was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1966 and graduated from the University of Hamburg in 1997. His diploma thesis was about noise effects in YBCO high-T_c Josephson junctions. In his subsequent PhD dissertation, he designed and fabricated flux-gate magnetometers and readout electronics to understand and optimize both noise performance and bandwidth.

Colmar's passion for electronics and micro controller programming started in school and followed him his whole life. Still, during his PhD study, he co-founded the company Magnicon, in December 2000. Magnicon started with a maintenance contract for a 62-channel MEG SQUID system at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf. With Colmar's expertise in analog and digital electronics, Magnicon was able to receive in 2002 the first license from PTB for a direct coupled SQUID electronics design. Other co-developments with PTB and in-house electronics developments under Colmar’s aegis followed soon, making Magnicon one of leading manufacturers of SQUID systems and measurement electronics.

Colmar was an excellent researcher and developer who never lost his inborn curiosity. This, and his great sense of humor made working with him a real pleasure. All of us at Magnicon greatly valued his expertise that he patiently tried to pass on to us.

He loved sailing in the North- and Baltic Sea as well as listening to music from Bach to Rammstein hard rock. He was committed to several social issues and lately increased his local political engagement. We have lost a wonderful and open-minded friend and colleague who is and will be missed by many. We share our grief with his wife and two young children.

Henry J. Barthelmess, for Magnicon GmbH

William E. "Bill" Keller, 1925 - 2015

March 30, 2016 (PO43). William E. “Bill” Keller, a distinguished low-temperature physicist, leader in superconductivity-related activities and a Santa-Fe, New Mexico, USA, and a dedicated philanthropist passed away on December 31st, 2015.

Bill was born in Cleveland, Ohio on March 11, 1925. As a student, he was active in wrestling and soccer, graduated from Harvard in 1945, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and subsequently, in 1948, completed there his Ph.D. work in physical chemistry. After a two years stint at the Ohio State University Cryogenic Laboratory, he joined the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in 1950 as a Staff Member in the Low Temperature Physics and Engineering Group. In 1970, he was appointed that Group’s Leader and in 1985 Assistant “P” Division Leader. He retired from LANL in 1989.

Bill's own important research and writings concentrated on low temperature physics, specifically properties of He3 and He4. These activities are covered in the obituary published in “Cold Facts”, the magazine of the Cryogenic Society of America (CSA), and also in the Brief History of the Condensed Matter and Thermal Physics Group at LANL through 2006, to which we refer our readers.

In the early 1970s, a new national need gained attention in the USA, and Bill’s group responded with energy R&D, a combination of fundamental research and technology development, including applications. The 1973 OPEC oil embargo triggered the widespread realization that US energy sources were being depleted and imported energy was undependable; furthermore, acid rain and other pollution became problematic. Fundamental work under Bill’s direction included research on flux motion, losses, and pinning in Type II superconductors, dielectric breakdown at cryogenic temperatures, properties of A15 superconductors (e.g., Nb3Ge), and the stability of superconductor/normal-metal composites, while applied efforts included the development of dc and ac superconducting power transmission lines, superconducting magnetic energy storage for electric utilities, a car fueled by cryogenic hydrogen, and cryogenic distillation purification of hydrogen isotopes for fusion-energy fuel. Federal support for such energy R&D dropped abruptly in the early 1980s, but many of these developments are receiving renewed attention today.

Near the peak of these activities, Bill was the organizer and chairman of the very successful 1980 Applied Superconductivity Conference (ASC 1980) in Santa Fe, which in retrospect was also a farewell to Bernd Mathias, the renowned experimental researcher into superconducting materials, especially the A15.

After retiring from LANL Bill became an active philanthropist. In 1993 he co-founded the Golden Apple Foundation of New Mexico for Excellence in Teaching. He also joined the Board of Directors of the Santa Fe Community Foundation and served for 15 years holding several offices, mostly financial, within this organization. Most recently, he was a Board Member of the Santa Fe Science Initiative, promoting scientific literacy in the schools of northern New Mexico.

Bill lived his life fully, loved his garden, traveled the world, enjoyed a round of golf, excelled at stock picking, savored good food, and used to finish his day with a shot of good single malt. He had a rich life, gave back plentifully to his community, family, and friends, and is missed by many. Bill is survived by his wife, four children, and two grandchildren.

This obituary is a compilation of the two documents linked above, the Obituary published in the “New Mexican” newspaper of January 10, 2016, and fond memories of Alex Braginski, who had the honor to serve as a consultant in Bill’s group in the late 1970’s and considered him a good friend and mentor. We thank Laurie Huget, Executive Director of CSA, and Greg Swift of LANL, for their kind help and assistance by providing sources.

Robert John Soulen, Jr. - A Man of Many Passions

January 6, 2016 (PO42). Robert John Soulen, Jr. succumbed to Parkinson’s disease on November 19, 2015, after more than a decade of struggle with the ailment. Robert (henceforth called “Bob”) was born in Phoenixville, PA on July 16, 1940. He attended Rutgers University and was granted a B. A. degree in physics in 1962. He was awarded a Ph. D. degree in physics by Rutgers in 1966. Bob married Rosemarie Vosseler while in graduate school.

At Rutgers, Bob was Prof. Peter Lindenfeld’s doctoral student, but he also benefitted from strong interactions with Prof. E. A. Lynton, Prof. William McLean, and Prof. Bernie Serin. Including Lindenfeld, they were known as the Rutgers Superconductivity Group. Under their tutelage, Bob became a master at making electrical and thermal transport measurements at cryogenic temperatures. This experience led Bob to accept an offer of a position in the Cryogenics Section of the Heat Division at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in 1968.

At NBS, Bob immediately began efforts to build or obtain commercially a ³He-⁴He dilution refrigerator (DR) that would eventually facilitate cryogenic studies at temperatures as low as 10 millikelvin (mK). While working on his refrigerator quest, Bob collaborated with James Schooley in the development of a temperature reference device for the range 0.5 K to 7 K (ultimately to 9 K). The device contained five (later six) carefully annealed wire samples all enclosed within sensor coils; thus, the operator could monitor all of the individual transitions in one experiment. NBS registered the device as Standard Reference Material No. 767. It proved to be very popular within the cryogenics community. In 1976, a new provisional international temperature scale was created by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (the French acronym is BIPM). The NBS SRM 767 device provided five of the eleven reference points on the scale.

Once his new refrigerator was operative, Bob developed another SRM, No.768, which could be used in the same fashion as the 767 device, but with five samples selected for the 16 mK to 200 mK range. Again, the SRM 768 offered easily observable, reproducible superconductive transitions for temperature references in a compact device.

Recognizing the significance of experimental work on noise thermometry performed in the NBS Boulder cryogenics laboratory during the late 1960s, Bob spent nearly twenty years applying the technique to the NBS low-temperature program. In this work, Bob collaborated with William Fogle and Jack Colwell, who were creating a composite temperature scale that involved the melting curve of ³He and the temperature dependence of paramagnetic salt susceptibility. The trio described their work in a pair of papers during a 1992 international temperature conference: “A new cryogenic temperature scale from 0.0063 K to 0.65 K” and “A decade of absolute noise thermometry at NIST using a resistive SQUID”.

Following the meeting in 1992, the three scientists decided to pursue an absolute temperature scale that would extend deep into the millikelvin range. Their intention was to marshal all available very-low-temperature methods into one laboratory experiment, so as to minimize the level of experimental uncertainty. The results of this effort were encouraging. They recorded all of the experimental and theoretical progress in a 102-page paper that they published in the Journal of Low Temperature Physics. The paper included a thorough discussion of their resistively biased use of the Josephson junction and their experimental comparisons of temperature as derived from the SRM 768, from the SQUID-based noise thermometer, from the 1976 provisional temperature scale, and from the ³He melting-curve results. Their work provided much of the basis for the international 2000 Provisional Low-Temperature Scale from 0.9 mK to 1 K.

Bob’s scientific reputation for excellence in his research grew throughout the cryogenics community as time went on. An adept experimenter, Bob also sought an understanding of the theoretical basis for his laboratory work. He was able in many cases to extend existing theory to new laboratory regimes. Bob received the 1976 NBS E. U. Condon Award, the 1979 Department of Commerce Gold Medal (shared with James Schooley), and the 2002 American Physical Society Joseph F. Keithley Award for Advances in Measurement Science. The Keithley citation read “For developing low-temperature noise thermometry to achieve an absolute thermometer which now defines the 2000 Provisional Low-Temperature Scale between 1 mK and 1 K to an accuracy of 0.1 % and for other significant contributions to temperature measurement over a distinguished career”.

Shortly after the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity (HTS) in 1986, Bob moved to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), although he still participated in the cryogenic thermometry effort at NBS/NIST in his “spare time”. Bob wanted to focus more intently on research in HTS. He brought with him his skills as a researcher and a leader. He quickly established a program focused first on vortex dynamics and the unusual behavior of the HTS materials in intense magnetic fields. Then, using his experience in noise thermometry, he turned to tunneling into magnetic and superconducting materials to gain a better understanding of the fundamentals of the superconducting state.

Although Bob spent the bulk of his career studying superconductivity, one of his major accomplishments in another area led to his most-cited scientific paper. Utilizing his knowledge of superconducting point contacts, he examined spin-polarized transport in magnetic metals. Motivated by a suggestion by Jeff Byers, a theory postdoc in his group, he performed a ground-breaking experiment that observed the transport of superconducting Cooper pairs into magnetic metals (Andreev scattering) that became a standard technique in the study of spin polarization in magnetic metals, including some novel materials called half magnets. Published in the journal Science, the paper, of which he was the lead author, has been cited more than 1000 times.

Bob and his colleagues also related their laboratory work to practical matters, including critical-current measurements, ac losses in superconducting tapes, and device characterization in the high-temperature superconducting space experiments (HTSSE).

Because of his inherent managerial ability, Bob was asked to head the NRL Material Physics Branch, with responsibility for directing research in magnetic materials, sensor materials, and materials synthesis and characterization. Administration was not Bob’s “cup of tea”, but his leadership in the multidisciplinary physics area was successful over a period of several years before he decided to return to his laboratory studies.

Bob’s calm demeanor masked his many passions, his drive, and a well-developed sense of humor. Besides physics, he enjoyed softball, fly fishing, fine wines, and good cigars. He shared his hobbies with family and friends, especially fishing and softball. His sense of humor once brought him to make a presentation while wearing hip waders during a laboratory review. The program manager had emphasized “come as you are” dress for the review, and Bob took her at her word.

For years, Bob and several colleagues enjoyed running at lunchtime. These events came to be known as “Bob runs” because the group often slowed to a walk while discussing family matters, recollections from his trips to China and Finland, details of tying fishing lures, and, of course, physics. In a single “run”, it was not unusual for the conversation to include electron-phonon interactions, woolly bears (fuzzy caterpillars), and Voltaire.

Bob is survived by his wife of 52 years, Rosemarie, by two daughters, Stephanie Harrington and Heidi Clark, and by three grandsons, Michael, Trevor, and Henry. In the early 1970s, Bob and Rosemarie lost an infant son, Robert John Soulen III.

As noted above, Bob contracted Parkinson’s disease more than a decade ago, but he refused to capitulate to the ailment even as its symptoms became debilitating. An article in the Washington Post (June 29, 2010) described Bob’s devotion to softball during the later stages of his affliction. He used a walker to approach home plate in games played in the 60-and-older Senior Montgomery County Softball League; he was a designated hitter in the lineups for both teams. Even as the Parkinson’s disease progressed to its final stages, Bob wrote two books (self-published on Amazon) about his passion for softball and fly fishing.

Bob also continued to exercise his hobby of tying fishing flies, using feathers obtained from birds. The feathers also found places on the covers of specialty cigar boxes that he decorated for friends, and as components of artistic bird montages. We will not soon forget his scientific abilities, his friendship, his wit, his passion for life, and his courage in the face of certain death. We grieve for his family, but we rejoice in the life that he led.

These notes were written by Jim Schooley, Don Gubser, Mike Osofsky, Boris Nadgorny, Bill Fogle, and Stu Wolf. We thank Keith Martin, librarian at NIST, for providing the reference to the Washington Post.

Herbert Bousack, 1953 - 2015

December 15, 2015 (PO41). Dr. Eng. Herbert Bousack was born on June 10, 1953, in Aachen, Germany, and it was there he succumbed to a rather sudden cancer on November 13, 2015. He completed his doctorate in mechanical engineering in 1981. After graduation, he became a member of staff at the Research Center Juelich (FZJ), Germany, and was employed there until his untimely death.

Herbert’s contribution to applied superconductivity was limited to the period 1990 to 1999, but it was significant. He organized and led the SQUID development and applications group, which under his guidance grew fast to become one of the two leading project of the whole FZJ and one of the most successful such activities worldwide. It concentrated on the development of high-Tc (HTS) rf SQUIDs and their application in three areas of biomagnetism, nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of metallic structures and geophysical exploration. In these years, several of the then “world’s first” originated under Herbert's direction, including both the matured HTS rf SQUID in the form it is practiced today and the first application of SQUIDs to airplane structure testing, which was licensed to a renowned airplane engine manufacturer and used in practice. All application projects were conducted in direct collaboration with industry or test organizations. Reorganization of the institute, in which all these activities were located, terminated most of the SQUID activities in or immediately after 1999.

Herbert’s personal technical involvement focused mostly on NDE of steel-reinforced concrete bridges. That specific development program was immensely successful, but eventually not implemented for cost reasons: the data interpretation methodology conceived in this project was so effective that is allowed to eventually replace the mobile SQUID systems by less sensitive and cheaper room-temperature sensors.

As a team leader, Herbert excelled by his extraordinary ability to communicate, motivate and create a team spirit with a special human sensitivity and touch in personal relationships. In private life, he was, among others, a passionate biker and active friend of animals.

Herbert Bousack will be well remembered and deeply missed by his former collaborators and colleagues. Let him rest in peace.

Alex Braginski, H. Joachim Krause, and Yi Zhang

Professor Harry Jones – Scientist and Educator

October 6, 2015 (PO39). Professor Harry (Henry) Jones CSci, CEng, CPhys, FInstP, MIET, who has died aged 70 on 24 August 2015, was a Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University. He worked there for 44 years until his retirement in 2012. He led the High Magnetic Fields and Superconductivity group for nearly 30 years which was de facto the UK National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and during that time supervised 14 PhD students and 10 post-doctoral researchers. He was an inspirational colleague and researcher. At Oxford University, his main research interests were in High Magnetic Fields, Superconductivity, and Cryogenics. As a research supervisor and leader, he brought with him an intense curiosity and drive to discover new and useful science, as well as a strong personal warmth and good humor.

Harry was born on 14 February 1945. He grew up in Lincolnshire and attended The Havelock Grammar School in Grimsby. He was recruited by the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell and after his training, posted to the Electronics and Applied Physics Division. In 1968, he joined the Magnet Group at Oxford University under Professor Kurti, FRS. Harry helped to equip the laboratory with superconducting magnets that including the celebrated multi-user mobile 16.5 T magnet system that was the world's first superconducting magnet above 15 T as well as the world's first operational hybrid magnet. Harry was one of Europe's leading scientists producing pulsed magnetic fields. In 1987, he pioneered the development of a unique high strength composite copper and steel conductor that broke the 50-tesla barrier for pulsed fields and eventually lead to the world's first non-destructive measurements in magnetic fields above 75 Tesla. His many invited seminars and fellowships enabled international colleagues to invite him to help develop the strategy for higher pulsed fields in Europe, Japan, and the USA. He was always interested in developing novel difficult measurements and was recognized as one of the world's experts for accurate measurements of the critical current density (J_c(B, T)) and induced resistive transition (IRT) of both low temperature and high-temperature superconductors.

Harry served on numerous technical committees and produced over 150, refereed scientific publications. From 2005, he served for a decade as Chairman of the British Cryogenics Council and served on the committee of the UK Magnetics Society from 2010. These interests echoed the strong collaborations with industry he pursued throughout his career. He was also Chairman of The Scientific and Advisory Committee HMFL at Dresden and the Europe-US 100 T council.

Harry is remembered with affection by his friends and colleagues and will be greatly missed. He is survived by Linda, his wife and lifetime love and companion.

William Brownfield Fowler Remembered

October 13, 2015 (PO40). Dr. William Brownfield Fowler passed away peacefully in St. Charles, Illinois, on May 3, 2015, aged 91. He was an internationally recognized expert in the fields of high-energy particle physics, superconducting magnets, cryogenic bubble chambers, and diffusion cloud chambers.

Born on March 22, 1924 in Owensboro, KY, he graduated from Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky, after which he enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps during WW-II and was trained as a radio operator. He obtained a B.A. in physics from University of Kentucky in Lexington in 1947. In 1951, he received a Ph.D. in physics from the Washington University, St. Louis, MO, after researching cosmic rays at the Climax Mine in Colorado. Next, he went to the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, Long Island, NY, to perform post-doctoral research that used diffusion cloud chambers to discover "strange" particles at BNLs Cosmotron. He then went to the University of California, Berkeley, as an assistant professor, 1955 - 1959. At Berkeley he and others used newly developed bubble chamber technology to discover and study new "strange" particles, such as Cascade- baryons. After that academic stint he took a staff position at BNL where he remained until 1969. While at BNL, he and others constructed the 80 inch, cryogenic-hydrogen bubble chamber, which was eventually used to discover the Omega- particle in 1963. In 1969 he took a position at the newly opened National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), in Batavia, Illinois, where he remained until he retired in 2002 at the age of 78. He further maintained scientific connection with the Lab until February 2015.

Bill Fowler is perhaps best known at Fermilab for his work leading the construction of the National Accelerator Laboratory 15-foot bubble chamber, the largest in the world. He was also a leader in the effort to build the Tevatron and in the development of its superconducting magnets.

He was an enthusiastic photographer who loved the outdoors. His wildflower photographs were beautiful reminders of hikes in the Sierra Nevada, the Rockies, or the Appalachian mountains. He also enjoyed traveling, backpacking, bicycling, canoeing, birdwatching, and skiing. He was a skilled woodworker, an avid bridge player, loved the arts, and regularly attended performances by the Chicago Symphony, the Lyric Opera. He also enjoyed watching plays, and regularly went to thespian festivals around the country and in Canada. He is survived by his wife Elizabeth Fowler, daughters and grandchildren.

(Remembrance after New York Times obituary, May 21-22, 2015, and Cryogenic Society of America “Cold Facts”, courtesy Laurie Huget, Exec. Director)

Viktor Efimovich Keilin, 1933 -2014

December 5, 2014 (PO38). Professor Viktor Keilin passed away on 24 November, 2014 at the age of 81. For more than 50 years, he was in charge of technical applications of superconductivity at the leading Russian research organization, the I.V. Kurchatov Institute for Atomic Energy.

Viktor Efimovich Keilin was born 26 February 1933 in Kharkov (then USSR). In 1957 he graduated from the Moscow Bauman State Technical University with specialization in cryogenics. After graduation, he joined the P.L. Kapitsa Institute for Physical Problems. His PhD thesis was dedicated to cryogenics for superconductivity.

Prof. Keilin joined the Kurchatov Institute in 1961. As he mentioned many times: “I was the very first person in USSR hired just to work in applied superconductivity” His supervisors were a vice-president of the USSR Academy of Science, M.D. Millionschikov, and academician E.K. Zavoisky known for the discovery of the electron paramagnetic resonance. From the very beginning, Viktor was involved in a new area at that time: applied superconductivity. His scientific ingenuity, technical creativity, dedication, and wisdom resulted in outstanding achievements. The Kurchatov team developed under his leadership classic cryogenic configurations for large superconducting magnets, including current leads that can carry high currents, and established principles for designing partially-stabilized superconducting magnets. Independent of the Oak Ridge team, he introduced the cable-in-conduit approach. Ideas of Prof. Keilin were successfully demonstrated in the world-first tokamak T-7 with superconducting coil system for generation of the toroidal field (1979), and in tokamak T-15 with Nb3Sn windings (1988). With upgrades and modifications, principles developed by him and his associates are used in designing superconducting magnets for ITER.

Viktor was always dreaming about efficient, easy-maintenance, relatively inexpensive superconducting magnets for diverse applications. The Kurchatov team built hundreds of magnets for gyrotrons, wigglers, high-field applications, etc. He lead developments that were used in such unique facilities as SST-1 (India), HT-7 (China), KSTAR (Korea), ATLAS (CERN). He inspired Russian efforts in HTS including development of superconducting transmission and distribution cables, fault current limiters, HTS leads for collider NICA (Dubna, Russia) and other projects. He was awarded two very prestigious USSR State Prizes, in 1976 and 1988.

Viktor Efimovich Keilin was also famous for attracting cohorts of young scientists to applied superconductivity. His positive attitude towards life, inexhaustible enthusiasm and energy, endless optimism and sense of humor attracted a lot of young people into the field. He had a map where he marked countries where his former students have been working. These included Russia, Ukraine, USA, Germany, Japan, England, Netherlands and many others. He was a professor at the Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics and supervised dozens of PhD students. For more than 30 years, he lead the annual school of superconductivity in Protvino near Moscow. It is not easy to find a Russian scientist or engineer in the field of superconductivity who did not attend this school at least once. Most of his students have been staying in the field during their whole career.

All of us who knew this outstanding man feel a great personal loss. At the same time, memory of Prof. Keilin will continue encouraging us towards new achievements in applications of superconductivity.

Colleagues at I.V. Kurchatov Institute and M. Parizh, GE, Schenectady, NY, USA

Koichi Kitazawa Remembered

December 12, 2014 (PO37U). Koichi Kitazawa, a materials scientist prominent in high-T_c superconductivity, former president of Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and president of Tokyo City University, passed away on September 26, 2014, at the age of 71. He was born on April 17, 1943 at Iiyama in Nagano prefecture, Japan. After obtaining the BS degree in chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science of the University of Tokyo, in 1966 he became graduate student in Professor Mukaibo’s laboratory, Department of Industrial Chemistry of the Faculty of Engineering at the same university, and got his master degree there in 1968. Finally, in 1972, he earned the D.Sc. degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Materials Science.  In 1973, he joined the University of Tokyo as research associate, lecturer (~1979), associate professor (~1982) and professor (~1987 to 2002). Early in the 2nd decade of his 30 years career at the University of Tokyo, he started studies on superconductivity of Ba(Bi,Pb)O3 at Professor Tanaka’s laboratory and as the first in the world verified high-T_c superconductivity at and above 30 K occurring in La-Ba-Cu-O system, thus confirming the discovery of Bednorz and Mueller.

The identification of superconducting phase (La,Ba)2CuO4 in November, 1986, was attained through the collaboration between Prof. Fueki’s and Prof. Tanaka’s laboratories. Soon after a series of epoch-making experiments, he triggered so-called “High-T_c fever” by reporting at the MRS 1986 Fall Meeting, held in Boston, USA, on observed evidence of superconductivity (the Meissner effect) in the high-T_c cuprate. Since the (La,Ba)2CuO4 could be synthesized easily by the conventional solid-state reaction in air, a large number of researchers all over the world immediately started exploring new high-T_c  superconductors, resulting in discoveries of numerous superconducting cuprates.

Subsequently, still at the University of Tokyo, Professor Kitazawa had been leading studies on new superconductors, superconductivity mechanisms and vortex physics in high-T_c  superconductors. In addition, he promoted a new scientific field, “magneto-science” for paramagnetic materials [1], using cryogen-free superconducting magnets equipped with current leads made of cuprate superconductors.

After moving to JST in 2002, he had supported many scientific projects leading to great successes, such as IPS cells by Professor Yamanaka’s [2] group and the discovery of iron-based superconductors by Professor Hosono’s group. After stepping down from JST presidency, he chaired “The Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident” in 2011-2012. Besides his great achievements on high-T_c  superconductors, and management of scientific organizations, he kept emphasized importance of giving dreams to young generations through advanced science and technologies; he found time to hold many scientific seminars for students at junior high schools and high schools. He moved to Tokyo City University as its president in October, 2013, and started new programs for students of the university, fueled by his enthusiasm for developing good human resources and having big dreams for the future world. His most regrettable sudden passing away occurred when implementation of his dreams was just beginning.

Jun-ichi Shimoyama (Department of Applied Chemistry, The University of Tokyo)

¹This term encompasses studies of effects of strong magnetic fields on various processes involving inorganic crystals or organic and biological paramagnetic molecules. An example of the latter is the effect on the growth of various plants.

²The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Shinya Yamanaka, a stem cell researcher, for his ground-breaking research on IPS (Induced Pluripotent Stem) cells.